Young Book Lovers Series

Here you will find a variety of book-related activities, including how-to videos you can follow in your own home, read-alongs with Rare Book School staff members, and coloring pages based on RBS’s teaching collections. This series is intended for children and adults alike who love books and book history.

Read-along with Rare Book School: Watch Gutenberg’s Gift and follow up with activities here.

Join us for the second read-along in our Young Book Lovers series—this one co-sponsored by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Dot Porter, RBS faculty member and Curator of Digital Research Services at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, reads Marguerite Makes a Book. Inspired by a manuscript in the Getty Museum collection, author Bruce Robertson and illustrator Kathryn Hewitt take readers on a journey to Paris in the 1400s where young Marguerite assists her father as he illuminates manuscripts for the nobility of France. 

Join us for the third video in our Young Book Lovers series, which highlights the work of American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000).  This video, created by Rare Book School staff members Ruth-Ellen St. Onge and Philippe Mongeau, begins by looking at the children’s book Aloneness, written by Brooks and published by Detroit’s Broadside Press in 1971. The video continues with a show-and-tell of several books from Rare Book School’s teaching collections related to Gwendolyn Brooks and the publishers and poets with whom she worked throughout her long and successful career. Follow up with a glossary here.

Color from our Collections: Click here to access coloring pages drawn from collections at RBS.